Best keyword tool for estimating traffic?

We are trying to expand traffic to our site by adding some keywords for associated topics and building web pages or another site to attract that traffic. I've been using overture and simply comparing its search totals for the most popular keywords in our industry and then some keywords for some sites and traffic where we could overlap.

Is this a good tool and way to do this - and are there other tools to accomplish the same? For example in May our generic national keyword phrase showed around 16,000 searches - our phrases showed a couple of hundred searches - and then when we looked at some potential regional overlap regional phrases I found about 7,000 searches.

Can I assume that these overlap phrases are 10-15 times more popular than mine? I assume it would similarly be hard to compete against them at first.

Thanks,

Dave

overture numbers are skewed by 1) commercial search terms, and 2) SEO SERP checking. Try my Google Keyword Popularity Tool, which works extremely well for less frequent keywords and typos.

Yes, I think overture number is not very accurate, but where does your number comes from?

Thanks for the responses. Used your tool Dajaone. I'm going to PM you for some follow up. I used bartending school as a general term in Overture tool which gave one response and then from that I totaled the responses under that for the relevant regional responses.


Then I typed in some phrases (regional) that we know our likely customers might like to look at. We found, in Overture, that those phrases showed up about 10-15 times more than the total of our regional phrases.

I've got to go back to our logs and total up what we turn up for on the national phrase and the regional phrases. I check them closely and our web analytical tool allows us to see where people who contact us (potential customers) came from (direct, which search phrases, etc.
Dave

Dajaone's tool is really terrific. His numbers on the estimated traffic are so much closer to actuality than Overture. Its not even close. Both tools give a similar picture with respect to the magnitude of difference in search terms between our basic phrase and some potential overlap phrases.



Here's to you Dajaone!!!

wordtracker works for me

I run a short adwords test... that way you can check stemming, singular/plurals and more... As long as you are bidding high enough to get all of your terms on the first page I think that this is the best possible data for relative search frequency.